Analyzing Matt Holliday’s mile-high splits (Part 1)
CREVE COEUR — When officials decided on the setting for the climate-controlled humidor at Coors Field — the machine geared to take the “mile high” out of mile-high offensive numbers — they decided to dial up Missouri. The humidor is set to 70 degrees and 50-percent humidity, the exact same specs Rawlings uses at its plant where official baseballs are stored here, in Missouri.
Maybe that explains how Matt Holliday has hit so well at Busch Stadium III. Climate familiarity.
Because there’s got to be some explanation besides altitude for the Colorado Rockies’ best hitter and his profoundly different home/road splits.
OF Matt Holliday connects for one of his 84 homers at Coors.
In the wake of Joe Strauss’ report that the St. Louis Cardinals are pursuing the Colorado Rockies outfielder and former MVP runnerup, reviews have been decidedly mixed. And many of them have focused on Holliday’s splits, how he can be a batting champ but also show signs of a statistics kissed by the Rocky Mountain air. The best breakdown of these numbers was, of course, done by columnist Bernie Miklasz, over the blog down the block, Bernie’s Extra Points. This entry is not an attempt to repeat those statistics — though there will be some overlap — but to find reasons. Think of this as a CSI on the numbers.
They are confounding.
Holliday won a batting title in 2007 and he finished 17 points behind Jimmy Rollins for the National League MVP. (In some corners, like this one, Holliday was considered the superior candidate for the award.) The Rockies’ left fielder is a gifted hitter, one who just as a year ago was considered in the second-tier class of righthanded hitters in the National League. Second-tier, that is, behind a tier of one, Albert Pujols. Yet, the home/road splits Holliday brings into any trade discussion are alarming:
CAREER AVERAGES … .319 batting … .552 slugging
AT COORS … .357 batting … .645 slugging
ELSEWHERE IN BASEBALL … .280 batting … .455 slugging
What is most eye-catching about those splits, as Bernie discussed, is the slugging percentage. In his career, Holliday has just 50 fewer at-bats on the road than he does at home, 1303 to 1353. He has 118 fewer hits on the road than at home. That alone does not explain the drastic difference between his slugging at Coors and his slugging elsewhere. The explanation: He has 73 fewer extra-base hits on the road than he does at home, including 40 fewer homers in just 20 fewer games.
This is a substantial difference, especially when the Cardinals are reportedly considering trading All-Star Ryan Ludwick (and/or another outfielder) in a package for Holliday and then having to find a way to sign Holliday, a free-agent-to-be, to what could be the second-richest on the team.
Holliday at Coors is a slugger, a lineup-changing power threat with a home every 16.1 at-bats and that hearty .645 slugging percentage. Away from Coors he’s, well, not. He averages a home run every 29.6 at-bats, which puts him in a different tax bracket. The road turns him into a different hitter. Still an All-Star, but more like these outfielders (AB/HR):
- Raul Ibanez, OF … 27.6
- Cory Hart, OF … 30.6
- Bobby Abreu, OF … 30.5
- Matt Kemp, OF … 33.7
- Jose Guillen, OF … 29.9
- And so on.
That’s the what and the where, the questions now are the how and the why …
(Follow this jump link for the continuation of this two-part blog entry.)
Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
I hope this trade works out…..This guy is a great hitter at Busch and being around these guys can only make him better…